Confrontation

Many of you know that the book The Last Week by Marcus Borg and Dominic Crossan has been part of my Lenten reading this year. Several observations in their book have added to my own understanding and experience of Holy Week. We are deep in Holy Week right now. Last night we gathered to remember Jesus’ last night on earth and the time he spent with his disciples as they broke bread together. Today we stand at the foot of the cross. Many fled back then. Many don’t bother today. But we have chosen to accompany Jesus on this day. His day of execution.

Part of what we do as a community during Holy Week is live it. Experience it. Together. We tell one another the stories of the historical events that took place. We immerse ourselves in those days back then, with the prayer that God will speak to us today through the remembrance of what happened then. But, in addition to reliving Holy Week, we are also called to take one step back from those events and reflect. Reflect and interpret the meaning of those events.

And Borg and Crossan have given me something new to reflect on this Good Friday. It is the reminder that Jesus was executed. Jesus was executed in a public confrontation between two kinds of power. To put it bluntly: this day is about more than just Jesus dying, as if that weren’t enough. It is about Jesus being executed. Quoting from The Last Week: "The New Testament and Jesus do not simply speak of dying, but of crucifixion. Suppose Jesus had jumped off a high building to illustrate that the path of transformation is dying. To say the obvious, this would have involved a death. But the way of Jesus involves not just any kind of death, but ‘taking up the cross’ and following him to Jerusalem, the place not only of dying and rising, but specifically of confrontation with the authorities and vindication by God."

This is a public battle. Borg and Crossan talk about it explicitly in political terms, about Jesus’ confrontation, not with the Jewish people, but with political systems of domination and injustice. That’s an issue worth exploring, but my own reflection is more broad. For me, this is a stark reminder of the important of the outward aspect of our Christian life… the reminder that the Christian life is not just about the state of my soul, but about the state of the world I live in, and my place in that world. "The New Testament and Jesus do not simply speak of dying, but of crucifixion." If it were just a matter of Jesus’ dying, we might say that Jesus died sort of as a personal favor to each of us. A favor that somehow bestowed a gift of inner peace to our souls. Or if it were just a matter of Jesus’ dying, it might seem that his dying served to prove that the barrier of death could be broken so that each of us might attain eternal life. Sort of like breaking the sound barrier. God, in his deep love, does offer us peace for our souls. And God, in his unfathomable love offers us the gift of eternal life. I don’t know that either of those gifts are dependent upon Jesus’ dying upon the cross, but perhaps in our reliving the experience of witnessing Jesus death on the cross, we can come to recognize and accept those gifts of peace and eternal life more fully. But there is even more to this day than the benefit to my individual soul of Jesus’ death. There are the public implications of his crucifixion. Yes, Jesus died for me, for us. But it isn’t just about us.

Jesus was executed, crucified, because the powers of the world felt that the threat of the Kingdom of God was worth killing over. And Jesus died on the cross because God felt that the Kingdom of God was worth dying for. Both are still true.

The Kingdom of God is not just pearly gates and streets of gold in the great hereafter. The Kingdom of God that Jesus proclaimed is a way of relating to one another in this world. It is a way of living, not just as individuals, but as societies where peace and justice prevail between people. In the Kingdom of God, peace and justice are how we relate to one another. This justice is not retributive justice, the sort of justice than imposes penalties in retribution for wrongdoing, but distributive justice where no one is oppressed or downtrodden or disenfranchised by another. A way of relating where the abundant goods of God’s creation are openly and justly distributed. A just world. A world of peace. The Kingdom of God. Jesus preaches about it over and over and over again. Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are the poor. Blessed are the merciful. The blessings of God’s kingdom are given to those who bring peace. The blessings of God’s kingdom are given to those who show mercy, who are not rich at the expense of others. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are the meek, not the powerful. In the kingdom of God it is the humble and meek who have citizenship, who have standing, who have a place. The powerful have nothing. Among the Gentiles, Jesus says (those who do not yet know the Kingdom of God), their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them, but it will not be so among you. Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant. No one will lord it over anyone else in the kingdom of God. The only power in the kingdom of God is God’s love. The only ruler worth following or obeying shows up on a donkey wearing sandals. Jesus brought the kingdom of God to the streets and homes and gathering places of Galilee and Judea and Jericho and Jerusalem.

And the powerful of his world executed him. The powers of our world are also threatened by the presence of the Kingdom of God. I don’t know who you imagine those powers to be in our world. I don’t know who you picture when you think of the powers of our world. This sermon is not a call to political anarchy or revolution. It is a reminder about Jesus’ desire and effort to bring the kingdom of God into the streets and homes and gathering places of our world and a reminder of the very real violent, physical opposition to that effort. As the Body of Christ, as Jesus’ followers, we are called to be and to bring the kingdom of God. We are also, through our sinfulness, often part of the opposition that would rather execute Jesus than live in a world that is peaceful and just for everyone. We fight against a world where resources and opportunities are justly distributed; where mercy and peace are more important than comfort and power; where service is the quality of relating to one another, not control. We often work to oppose or quash the presence of the Kingdom of God in our world.

Jesus was executed, crucified, because the powers of the world felt that the threat of the Kingdom of God was worth killing over. And Jesus died on the cross because God felt that the Kingdom of God was worth dying for. The reality of that confrontation is still a part of our world.

But even today on Good Friday, as we stand at the foot of the cross, we cannot forget that God raised Jesus from the dead. Jesus was raised because God wants us to see and know that the Kingdom of God is worth living for. The Kingdom of God is worth living for. And we are invited to be a part of it.